DOGE preferentially cancelled grants and contracts to recipients in counties that voted for Harris [OC]
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Recently, an analysis suggested that the Department of Government Expenditures (DOGE) “preferentially cancelled grants and contracts to recipients in counties that voted for Harris.” While this claim might seem compelling at first, a closer look at the data—specifically the lack of full transparency—reveals significant flaws in the analysis.
The analyst retrieved only a subset of DOGE’s cancellations, which they claimed represented about 30% of total savings. The remaining 70% of the data was not disclosed, leaving a major gap in the analysis. Without the complete data, it’s impossible to draw definitive conclusions.
Despite this, the analyst crossed-referenced the cancellations with county-level 2024 election results and found a pattern of more cancellations in counties that voted for Harris. However, this pattern is misleading—as the full scope of contract distributions across different counties wasn’t considered. Harris counties may have received a higher volume of grants to begin with, which naturally could lead to more cancellations in those areas.
What’s more, the analyst attempted to build a control set with contracts and grants from FY2021-2025, but even this approach only represents a fraction of the full picture. The absence of complete data on how DOGE selected cancellations raises further doubts about the claim of bias.
In fact, the analyst themselves admitted that “it is therefore possible that they made cancellations unbiasedly across the Trump-Harris political spectrum but preferentially disclosed ones to Harris counties for publicity purposes.” This speculation, without complete data, weakens the argument significantly.
Until DOGE releases the full dataset, we cannot definitively prove or disprove claims of political bias. The pattern observed could simply be a coincidence, or the result of more grants being awarded to Harris counties in the first place.
In conclusion, the analyst’s claim of politically biased cancellations is based on incomplete data and conjecture, not hard evidence. Without full transparency from DOGE, any conclusions drawn are premature and unsubstantiated.